Meta

Thanks to a number of things that suddenly demand all my attention, all of the time, the blog is taking a break. It might be a short break, it might be a long break. I can’t predict with any accuracy and since I’m not a climate scientist, I won’t try.

Hosting is paid up for while ahead, so the site’s safe if you need a hottie fix. And the Blogroll is replete with talent, wit and in one very special case, all the nakedry you can shake a stick at. Poor choice of words, but Soylent won’t mind.

The site was hacked (probably by a disgruntled hippie) and while all posts have now been restored, all images and most videos were lost. Given the age of the blog many links may be broken, navigate at your own discretion.

You don’t have to be a bit crazy to believe global warming is running rampant because of a few factories and a harmless trace gas essential to life on Earth and not the giant ball of nuclear hell in the sky, but it helps:

A new study has found that many people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are worrying about the effects of climate change and global warming. Researchers from the University of Sydney looked at patients attending an anxiety disorders clinic.

They found one-third of the patients had anxiety about the effects of climate change. Their behaviours included checking and rechecking pets water bowls, light switches, taps and stoves.

The Hippie of the Week suffered a temporary case of multiple personality disorder, a Kennedy proves technology saves lives and we don’t recommend the soup down under. No, really.

Part One: Hippie of the Week

This week’s Hippie of the Week comes to you by a tip from Anthony Watts, skeptic godfather and man behind the most-read climate site in the world, after some odd behavior in the comments on this post. While hippies might see this as evidence of collusion between evil skeptics, it’s really not. Anthony simply suggested I use his recommendation, or something bad would happen to my racehorse. I don’t own any sort of horse, but when faced with an offer you can’t refuse, why look a gift hippie in the mouth?

The HOTW winner this week is Malte Humpert, Founder of the Arctic Institute. Malte disagreed with things being said about the Arctic Institute on WUWT, but felt it necessary to create sock-puppet identities to defend his case. He got caught, and made a statement on the Arctic Institute’s web page:

Updated March 10

The quote by Malte Humpert and his picture have been removed following a copyright claim by Humpert and/or the Arctic Institute.

To comply with a copyright claim by Malte Humpert, the image that was here has been replaced with this picture of a friendly donkey. Because who would complain about a pic of a nice ass?

What Humpert did at WUWT wasn’t as egregious as Peter Gleick’s illegal phishing of the Heartland Institute, but it indicates a disturbing lack of professionalism. Hippies with strong feelings about geographic areas of Gaia like the Arctic and Pacific would do better to check themselves into Institutions instead of running around founding Institutes.

Unfortunately for Malte Humpert, the efforts to disguise his personal identity at WUIWT only led to a closer look at the Arctic Institute. It turns out not to be an ivory tower filled with learned men with frostbite stories and a penchant for polar bear jerky, but Humpert’s apartment in Washington DC. Oddly, the building has a history of harboring pesky critters:

[REDACTED*] House has bed bugs. I do not think that all of the apartments are infested – but mine is! I have been covered in bites and am miserable.

Note, this is an anonymous report to bedbugregistry.com for the same address, not a report from Humpert. Probably.

Congratulations to Malte Humpert for the big HOTW win, and for being the latest victim of boomerang activism. That’s when whatever you throw comes full circle and smacks you in the back of the head when you’re not expecting it, in case you wondered.

*I’ve got the link, but there’s no reason to publish Humpert’s address.

If you want to have a serious chance at averting catastrophic global warming, then we need to start phasing out all fossil fuels as soon as possible. Natural gas isn’t a bridge fuel from a climate perspective. Carbon-free power is the bridge fuel until we can figure out how to go carbon negative on a large scale by the end of the century.

Unicorn futures are up.

Your web searches are increasingly powered by wind turbines. Which gives concerned parents a new angle on an old problem. Kids, every time you search for young ladies who can’t afford clothes, an eagle dies.

The oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air; the gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which over time is neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. But if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building.

That’s right — this pop-up restaurant, which is open from March 2 through the 21st in honor of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, wants you to get all up in its custom-made toilets. The green eatery is collecting human urine and using it to fertilize soybean and canola crops. The restaurant, which is designed by Joost Bakker who is clearly a maniac, then uses unrefined canola oil to generate electricity for all of its operations.

The idea may have been inspired by President Obama’s advice to Republicans that it was time to eat your peas, but if so, something was lost in the translation to strine.

soup of the day, anyone?

America suffered a bad week for tornadoes, but as it worked to clear up the mess, Kevin Trenberth rushed to blame global warming. Because crisis. Waste. Never.

A Kennedy used Twitter to call Sen. Inhofe some names that would have brought howls of protest if anyone on the right had done the same. The good news is that in the modern world, Kennedy’s use Twitter to get themselves into trouble, not bridges and young female campaign workers.

She’s back. A sure sign of a new la Laframboise post is when a picture of Raj Pachauri face down in a gutter with a bootprint on his back appears in my feed reader. This week we learn the hapless, hounded head of the IPCC has a dodgy history:

The most explosive revelation involves a 1996 Delhi High Court ruling in which a judge said he had “no hesitation in coming to the conclusion” that Pachauri and two others had “sworn to false affidavits.” The judge went on to remark that the business affairs of the non-profit convention center at the heart of the lawsuit were “not safe in the hands of officers” such as Pachauri (the judge’s ruling is backed up here).

Part Three: Inconvenient Truths

British Prime Minister David Cameron says wind farms have been wasteful of public money. Which prompts the question why he allowed Chris Huhne to build so many. The GWPF figures wind has added £45 billion to the cost of meeting the UK’s climate targets.

BRITAIN could meet its climate change targets in 2020 for £45 billion less if it abandoned wind power in favour of cheaper gas-fired power plants and nuclear reactors, an independent report has found. The saving would rise to £150 billion by 2050 because of the huge costs associated with building and running the proposed 32,000 wind turbines.

The Spectator has the best article on the daft idea of wind power, it’s long but worth the read.

…rising fuel prices can in no small part be attributed to the environmental mania which is at the heart of the movement. It isn’t oil and gas companies that are killing the elderly with high fuel prices, it’s carbon mania and environmentalism.

Oh noes. Don’t blame micro-funded think tanks for the public’s refusal to buy into the global warming narrative, it’s the fault of those Big Green funders:

Environmental funders spent a whopping $10 billion between 2000 and 2009 but achieved relatively little because they failed to underwrite grassroots groups that are essential for any large-scale change, the report says.

Something extraordinary is happening in the great Climate Wars. I had a taste of it just the other day on an LBC talk show. The producer had only booked me in for a ten-minute slot, in case the listeners weren’t interested in my boring new book about that tediously hackneyed subject Man Made Global Warming. But the switchboards were jammed and the station ended up keeping me in for a full hour to reply to all the calls.

There was one big problem though: “We can hardly find ANYONE who disagrees with you,” whispered the show’s host, Julia Hartley-Brewer. This was true. By the end, things had got so desperate that I found myself accidentally picking fights with callers who were on my side.

Part Four: Global Hottie

While Scarlett Johnasson hasn’t yet slapped a restraining order on the round-up, we’re not taking any chances. So this week, we hop over the pond to see what Britain has to offer. And we found English actress and undercover hottie, Emily Mortimer. Star of Hugo and many other movies that are probably good but we haven’t seen. Emily Mortimer, who knew?

Beauty Bo Derek and billionaire Richard Branson have joined forces to save Canada’s polar bear population from extinction. But the job won’t get done unless individuals harness their power to bring about change, according to actress Derek. …”Right now there’s such a debate on climate change — who is responsible, the science of it. There’s a lot of work to be done and I realize that. But in the meantime we must save polar bears and sharks,” Derek said.

CHINA’S thrill-seeking nouveau riche are being offered a $75,000 trip hunting down endangered polar bears. The hefty price tag for the 10-day expedition across the polar ice pack in Canada includes the services of a taxidermist, who turns the trophy specimens into rugs for the hunters’ living rooms.

Harking back to an era when the immediate response to a sighting of an endangered species was to bag it for posterity before heading back to the tent for a gin & tonic and damned good mustache waxing, the owner of the Beijing-based I Love Hunting Club said:

“If you believe the ice caps are melting as some claim, these bears are going to die anyway, so you may as well hunt them.”

Global warming probably isn’t much of a problem for Ursus Maritimus, but the incoming hail of Chinese lead is going to leave a mark.

Judith Curry gave an interview to OilPrice.com last week which caused some controversy.

It is reprinted here, unedited and in full, with the generous permission of OilPrice.com.

The IPCC May Have Outlived its Usefulness – An Interview with Judith Curry

As the global warming debate increases in its intensity we find both sides deeply entrenched, hurling accusations and lies at one another in an attempt to gain the upper hand. This divide within the scientific community has left the public wondering who can be trusted to provide them with accurate information and answers.
The IPCC, the onetime unquestioned champion of climate change, has had its credibility questioned over the years, firstly with the climategate scandal, then with a number of high profile resignations, and now with the new “Gleickgate” scandal (1) (2) – One has to wonder where climate science goes from here?

Oilprice.com just had the pleasure of interviewing the well known climatologist Judith A. Curry in order to get her thoughts on climate change, the IPCC, geo-engineering, and much more. The original interview can be found at Oilprice.com

Judith is the current chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and hosts sensible discussions on climate change at her popular blog Climate, etc.
Considered somewhat of a black sheep within the scientific community Judith was a one time supporter of the IPCC until she started to find herself disagreeing with certain policies and methods of the organization. She feared the combination of groupthink and political advocacy, combined with an ingrained “noble cause syndrome” stifled scientific debate, slowed down scientific progress, and corrupted the assessment process.

OilPrice.com: What are your personal beliefs on climate change? The causes and how serious a threat climate change is to the continued existence of society as we know it.

Judith Curry: The climate is always changing. Climate is currently changing because of a combination of natural and human induced effects. The natural effects include variations of the sun, volcanic eruptions, and oscillations of the ocean. The human induced effects include the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, pollution aerosols, and land use changes. The key scientific issue is determining how much of the climate change is associated with humans. This is not a simple thing to determine. The most recent IPCC assessment report states: “Most [50%] of the warming in the latter half of the 20th century is very likely [>90%] due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.” There is certainly some contribution from the greenhouse gases, but whether it is currently a dominant factor or will be a dominant factor in the next century, is a topic under active debate, and I don’t think the high confidence level [>90%] is warranted given the uncertainties.

As I stated in my testimony last year: “Based upon the background knowledge that we have, the threat does not seem to be an existential one on the time scale of the 21st century, even in its most alarming incarnation.”

OilPrice.com: You have said in the past that you were troubled by the lack of cooperation between organizations studying climate change, and that you want to see more transparency with the data collected. How do you suggest we encourage/force transparency and collaboration?

Judith Curry: We are seeing some positive steps in this regard. Government agencies that fund climate research are working to develop better databases. Perhaps of greatest interest is the effort being undertaken by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which is a (mostly) privately funded effort to compile and document a new data base on surface temperatures, in a completely open and transparent way.

OilPrice.com: Do you feel climatologists should be putting more effort into determining the effect of the sun on our climate? As the IPCC primarily focuses on CO2 as the cause of climate change – Is the importance of CO2 overestimated and the importance of the sun is underestimated?

Judith Curry: I absolutely think that more effort is needed in determining the effect of the sun on our climate. The sun is receiving increased attention (and funding), and there is a lively debate underway on interpreting the recent satellite data record, reconstructing past solar variability, and predicting the solar variability over the 21st century. Nearly all of the solar scientists are predicting some solar cooling in the next century, but the magnitude of the possible or likely cooling is hotly debated and highly uncertain.

OilPrice.com: You are well known in climate and energy circles for breaking from the ranks of the IPCC and questioning the current information out there. What do you see as the reasons for the increase in skepticism towards global warming over the last few years.

Judith Curry: Because of the IPCC and its consensus seeking process, the rewards for scientists have been mostly in embellishing the consensus, and this includes government funding. Because of recent criticisms of the IPCC and a growing understanding that the climate system is not easily understood, an increasing number of scientists are becoming emboldened to challenge some of the basic conclusions of the IPCC, and I think this is a healthy thing for the science.

OilPrice.com: What are your views on the idea that CO2 may not be a significant contributor to climate change? How do you think such a revelation, if true, will affect the world economy, and possibly shatter public confidence in scientific institutions that have said we must reduce CO2 emissions in order to save the planet?

Judith Curry: Personally, I think we put the CO2 stabilization policy ‘cart’ way before the scientific horse. The UN treaty on dangerous climate change in 1992 was formulated and signed before we even had ‘discernible’ evidence of warming induced by CO2, as reported in 1995 by the IPCC second assessment report. As a result of this, we have only been considering one policy option (CO2 stabilization), which in my opinion is not a robust policy option given the uncertainties in how much climate is changing in response to CO2.

OilPrice.com: There has been quite a bit of talk recently on geo-engineering with entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson pushing for a “plan B” which utilizes geo-engineering to manipulate the environment in order to cool the atmosphere. Geo-engineering could be much cheaper than reducing emissions, and also much quicker to produce results and scientists are lobbying governments and international organizations for funds to experiment with various approaches, such as fertilizing the oceans or spraying reflective particles and chemicals into the upper atmosphere in order to reflect sunlight and heat back into space. What are your thoughts on geo-engineering? Is it a realistic solution to solving climate change or is it a possible red herring?

Judith Curry: With regards to geo-engineering, there are two major concerns. The first is whether the technologies will actually work, in terms of having the anticipated impact on the climate. The second is the possibility of unintended consequences of the geoengineering.

OilPrice.com: You have been noted to criticize the IPCC quite openly in the past on several topics. Even going so far as to say: “It is my sad conclusion that opening your mind on this subject (climate change controversy) sends you down the slippery slope of challenging many aspects of the IPCC consensus.”
Do you believe that the organization as a whole needs to be assessed in order to better serve progress on climate change? What suggestions do you have on how the organization should function?

Judith Curry: The IPCC might have outlived its usefulness. Lets see what the next assessment report comes up with. But we are getting diminishing returns from these assessments, and they take up an enormous amount of scientists’ time.

OilPrice.com: Would renewable energy technologies have received the massive amounts of funding we have seen over the last few years without global warming concerns?

Judith Curry: I think there are other issues that are driving the interest and funding in renewables, including clean air and energy security issues and economics, but I agree that global warming concerns have probably provided a big boost.

OilPrice.com: What do you believe are the best solutions to overcoming/reversing climate change; is a common consensus needed in order to effectively combat climate change?

Judith Curry: The UN approach of seeking a global consensus on the science to support an international treaty on CO2 stabilization simply hasn’t worked, for a variety of reasons. There are a range of possible policy options, and we need to have a real discussion that looks at the costs, benefits and unintended consequences of each. Successful solutions are more likely to be regional in nature than global.

OilPrice.com: I saw an interesting comment on another site regarding climate science that i thought i’d get your opinion on as it raises some very interesting arguments: Climate science has claimed for 30 years that it affects the safety of hundreds of millions of people, or perhaps the whole planet. If it gets it wrong, equally, millions may suffer from high energy costs, hunger due to biofuels, and lost opportunity from misdirected funds, notwithstanding the projected benefits from as yet impractical renewable energy. Yet, we have allowed it to dictate global policy and form a trillion dollar green industrial complex – all without applying a single quality system, without a single performance standard for climate models, without a single test laboratory result and without a single national independent auditor or regulator. It all lives only in the well known inbred, fad-driven world of peer review.

Judith Curry: I agree that there is lack of accountability in the whole climate enterprise, and it does not meet the standards that you would find in engineering or regulatory science. I have argued that this needs to change, by implementing data quality and model verification and validation standards.

OilPrice.com: Do you believe that the language used in papers and at conferences is a problem? The public just wants straight answers to questions: Is the climate warming, By how much, and what will the effects be? Scientists need to step out from behind the curtain and engage the public with straight answers and in their own words. Is this achievable, or is climate science too complex to be explained in laymen’s terms? Or is it because even climate scientists can’t agree on the exact answers?

Judith Curry: I think the biggest failure in communicating climate science to the public has been the reliance on argument from consensus. We haven’t done a good job of explaining all this, particularly in the context of the scientific disagreement

OilPrice.com: What resources would you recommend to people who wish to get a balanced and objective view on climate science and climate change.

Judith Curry: There is no simple way to get a balanced and objective view, since there are so many different perspectives. I think my blog Climate Etc. at judithcurry.com is a good forum for getting a sense of these different perspectives.

Backyard hockey rinks may become extinct in Canada if climate change goes unchecked, a renowned McGill University scientist says. “In the next 50 years, the skating season could disappear in most of the regions across Canada,” Lawrence Mysak told CTV Montreal.

If only there were indoor rinks that made it possible to skate in any weather, or even for hockey to be played in places like Miami, Tampa and Phoenix. Oh, wait.

But wait, there’s more. Simon Fraser University says no matter how much carbon Canada saves, or how many hippies wander the BC interior, we’re toast:

“Let’s be honest, it’s totally unrealistic to believe that we can stop all emissions now,” says Zickfeld, an assistant professor of geography at SFU. “Even with aggressive greenhouse gas mitigation, it will be a challenge to keep the projected global rise in temperature under 2 degrees Celsius,” emphasizes Zickfeld.

The geographer wrote the paper with Damon Matthews, a University of Concordia associate professor at the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment.

The duo used an earth system climate model developed by the University of Victoria to study the impact of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions on the world’s climate. The study was based on emission levels that are consistent with data from the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

They used a computer model and data from the IPCC. What could possibly go wrong?

The 2 deg C limit is talked about by a lot within Europe. It is never defined though what it means. Is it 2 deg C for the globe or for Europe? Also when is/was the base against which the 2 deg C is calculated from? I know you don’t know the answer, but I don’t either! I think it is plucked out of thin air. I think it is too high as well. If it is 2 deg C globally, this could be more in Europe – especially the northern part. A better limit might be maintaining some summer Arctic sea ice!

Once again yet another study that emphatically shows that climate changed in the recent past (while CO2 was stable), and that these changes were in sync with solar activity. We’ve said it a thousand times before, and we’ll probably have to say it another thousand times:

What influence will future solar activity changes over the 21st century have on projected global near-surface temperature changes?
Key Points

Past solar activity is used to estimate future changes in total solar irradiance
The impact on future global temperatures is estimated with a climate modelThe Sun’s influence is much smaller than future anthropogenic warming

Say goodbye to your laptop. Say goodbye to your air conditioner. In fact, say goodbye to technology and electricity for a long, long time, because the earth has a roughly 12 percent chance of experiencing a massive solar storm within the next decade, says space physicist Pete Riley, senior scientist at Predictive Science in San Diego, California.

Carbonite is between a rock and a hard place. Reversing the decision will infuriate the left, and do little to persuade the right that it’s a firm to be trusted, yet sticking to the decision is likely to drive the value of the stock into the ground. Business schools will use this as a teachable moment not to Rush to hasty decisions. See what I did there?

Original Post:

This post isn’t about global warming. But it has a carbon theme, sorta.

There’s a fuss south of the border about whether or not radio host Rush Limbaugh insulted a woman who figured the government owes her free contraception. Limbaugh apologized for the name he called her, so it seems even he agrees he went too far. She refused the apology, as is her right. Fair enough. Their spat is not what this post is about, what happened next is.

The left went after Limbaugh’s advertisers, including data back-up company Carbonite, who quickly caved to the pressure:

This is where the fuss became of personal interest.

I’m a Carbonite customer and just renewed my subscription for the third time at Christmas. But now I’ve disabled the auto-renew option and will find some other provider for my future data back-ups. Because data security is what I pay for, and I no longer trust Carbonite to provide it.

I’m not dropping Carbonite because it pulled advertising from Limbaugh, that’s its right, whether or not I agree with the decision. But its decision tells me something about the company, and it’s nothing good.

If Carbonite folds like a cheap suit to demands from a few noisy and noisome voices, how long do you think they’d put up a fight if the government wanted to look at what it has on its servers? If management is afraid of a few horny hippies looking for free lube and rubbers from Uncle Sam, how will they respond if Uncle his own self shows up at the door and asks them to bend over?

Based on information available as of February 9, 2012, Carbonite is issuing guidance for the first quarter and full year 2012 as follows:

First Quarter 2012: The company expects total revenue for the first quarter to be in the range of $18.2 million to $18.4 million and non-GAAP net loss per common share to be in the range of ($0.32) to ($0.33). Carbonite’s expectations of non-GAAP net loss per diluted common share for the first quarter exclude stock-based compensation expense, patent litigation expense, lease abandonment charges and amortization expense on intangible assets and assume a tax rate of 0% and weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 25.2 million.

Full Year 2012: The company expects 2012 total revenue to be in the range of $83.3 million to $84.8 million and non-GAAP net loss per diluted common share to be in the range of ($0.82) to ($0.86). Carbonite’s expectations of non-GAAP net loss per common share for the full year excludes stock-based compensation expense, patent litigation expense, lease abandonment charges and amortization expense on intangible assets and assumes a tax rate of 0% and weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 25.4 million.

If only Australian politicians had listened to Tim Flannery’s warnings about how global warming would cause permanent drought, they wouldn’t have needed to open the spillways on the Warragamba dam this weekend.

Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused “a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas” and made the soil too hot, “so even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems … “.

Mr. Ray Finkelstein QC, a left-wing former Federal Court Judge with no media experience, at the request of the Gillard Government, issued a 400 page report which calls for a Big Brother Super-Regulator to ‘regulate’ political speech and – among other things – impose new laws with the power to stop climate change realists from speaking up.

If only Australian politicians had listened to Tim Flannery’s warnings about how global warming would cause permanent drought, they wouldn’t have needed to open the spillways on the Warragamba dam this weekend.

Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused “a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas” and made the soil too hot, “so even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems … “.

Mr. Ray Finkelstein QC, a left-wing former Federal Court Judge with no media experience, at the request of the Gillard Government, issued a 400 page report which calls for a Big Brother Super-Regulator to ‘regulate’ political speech and – among other things – impose new laws with the power to stop climate change realists from speaking up.